"Green Energy Farming"

Too often the energy question boils down to, "which of many generating resources are we going with next?"  This, until recently, left conservation right out of the context since conservation is a unique form of energy supply.  And then there are the "renewables", penalized by high front end costs and penalized because most decision support systems do not include the present value of long term/life cycle environmental or social costs and benefits.  A further perceptual bias working against conservation and renewables is looking at energy supply choices as being strictly individual units - a dam, a gas turbine, a windmill, a solar panel etc.

Given the variety of local endowments of hydro, tidal, thermal, wind, solar, fossil fuel  the most optimal source may not be any one of these but combinations of several.  On the West Coast, we have abundent supply of all of these, and depending upon the specific locale - wind, solar, tidal, hydrogen and fossil fuel could be combined in such a way as to generate firm, reliable power at optimal levels where the so called "intermittant sources" are firmed up by continually producing at maximum generation, and using any surplus to produce hydrogen for times of peak demand and low supply.  Consider an energy farm with tidal, solar and wind with hydrogen and natural gas all operating in an integrated fashion to optimize the production of firm power while meeting peak demands and offsetting low supplies.  At maximum flood and ebb tidal provides excess energy, especially likely when solar and wind are also at maximum production.  The so called excess "fuel" is virtually "free" and can be used economically to produce hydrogen through electolysis.  If insufficient hydrogen is available from storage to meet peak demands and supply shortfalls, then stored natural gas can be utilized in the very same combustion turbines.

Modern computer process control facilities can combine the known factors and the probabilistic factors to produce the most optimal level of firm power by using each energy source in its most appropriate role.

There is no single combination of energy generation that will be optimal in all locations.  Much depends upon the local availability of the needed intermittant, temporary and firm capacities.

But, when all life cycle costs are included, my money is on green energy farms and efficient end-use to win the funding contests, hands down!

John Hague

(thirty years experience in the energy industry)